There is a new fire burning in Iran’s forgotten southeast, and the clerical regime in Tehran is struggling to contain it. Across the sun-scorched provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan and neighboring Kerman, a coalition of opposition groups known as the People’s Fighters Front, or JMM, has launched a string of armed attacks that have shaken the Islamic Republic’s confidence in a region it has long neglected. The JMM emerged in December 2025 as an unlikely alliance of Baloch nationalist organizations and the militant Sunni group Jaish al-Adl, joining forces in a shared struggle against a government that has treated the country’s Sunni minority as second-class citizens for decades. Iran is predominantly Shiite, and Sistan and Baluchistan, the second-largest of Iran’s 31 provinces, has become a symbol of that sectarian discrimination. For the people living there, poverty, marginalization, and the heavy hand of the state have fueled a simmering resentment that now has found organized armed expression. The coalition claims responsibility for at least six strikes in the region, and while each attack may seem small in isolation, together they have created a serious security problem for the government. Mardo Soghom, an Iran expert who has written extensively about the Islamic Republic, told Fox News Digital that the unrest in Iran’s Sunni provinces can stretch the regime’s military and internal security capabilities and have a psychological impact on its forces. That matters especially after the punishing 40-day operation by the United States and Israel, which left Iran’s rulers feeling exposed and vulnerable. Soghom believes these armed groups probably cannot establish full control over the southeast, but they can seriously weaken the regime’s hold. He also raised a question that hangs over the entire situation: whether the fighters are receiving assistance from Iran’s adversaries, whether that means Gulf Arab states, Israel, or the United States. No one yet knows the answer, but the fact that the question is being asked at all is proof that the Islamic Republic no longer has a free hand in its own backyard.
The human cost of this escalation is staggering, and the numbers paint a grim picture. According to a report from the Human Rights Activist News Agency, or HRANA, at least 63 armed incidents were recorded across Sistan and Baluchistan and Kerman between March 31 and October 10, 2026. That period saw a sharp escalation in violence, with at least 94 people killed and 33 injured. Iranian official sources, predictably, offered a lower death toll of 87 fatalities and 10 injuries, but even those figures are difficult to verify independently. What makes the report even more alarming is the accelerating pace of violence: 18 incidents were recorded in just the final 18 days of the reporting period, surpassing the total for any previous full month. This is not an occasional flare-up; it is a sustained and growing insurgency. The JMM stunned the regime on October 14 with a particularly bold operation: the assassinations of women members of the Basij paramilitary force, including a commander and a police officer in Sistan and Baluchistan Province. The Basij is a despised force in Iran, and the United States has designated it a terrorist entity because it operates under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Washington has also classified as a terrorist organization. Just days before that attack, Iranian regime-controlled media confirmed that Nosrat Eftekhari, the deputy for Cultural and Social Affairs of the Provincial Law Enforcement Command, was killed by a roadside bomb in Zahedan, the provincial capital. These are not random acts of violence. They are carefully chosen targets designed to show that no regime official is safe, no matter their rank or position. For ordinary people in the region, these attacks have become part of daily life, a constant backdrop of tension and fear, but also, for some, a flicker of hope that the regime’s power is not absolute.
The big question now is whether Tehran can hold onto Sistan and Baluchistan. Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, told Fox News Digital that there have always been periodic cycles of unrest in the province, but what we are witnessing now is a clear uptick in activity. Brodsky pointed out that the current commander of the IRGC’s Ground Forces, Mohammad Karami, used to be governor of the province and commanded IRGC forces there. His experience in that volatile region was one of the reasons Karami was elevated to his current post in 2025, given the sensitive security situation throughout the country. That tells you something about how seriously the regime takes the threat: it has put one of its most experienced commanders in charge of the ground forces specifically because he understands the dynamics of the southeast. Still, Brodsky does not see any imminent threat of the opposition seizing full control. He stressed that for Iranians, especially those in the opposition, preserving the territorial integrity of Iran is a red line, and that needs to be clearly understood in Western capitals. In other words, even those who dream of overthrowing the clerical regime do not want to see the country break apart. Khalilullah Balochi, a Baluch activist and journalist, told Iran International that the activities of these groups are not new; what is new is the intensification of attacks. That distinction is crucial. The region has always had armed resistance, but it was usually small-scale and easily contained. Now, the attacks are more frequent, more sophisticated, and more deadly. The regime’s response has been heavy-handed, with arrests, checkpoints, and military deployments, but so far, that has not stopped the bleeding. Each new attack forces the IRGC to divert resources from other priorities, and in a country already dealing with internal dissent, economic collapse, and the aftermath of foreign military operations, that is a heavy burden.
For Iranians watching from inside the country and abroad, the JMM’s attacks evoke a complicated mix of emotions. Navid Mohebbi, a former Persian media analyst for the State Department’s Public Affairs Bureau, told Fox News Digital that the newly formed popular Fighters Front has carried out a series of relatively successful attacks against mid-level regime officials and security personnel in Sistan and Baluchistan in recent months, drawing a degree of public attention. At a time when the regime is executing protesters on a daily basis, the killing of certain mid-ranking security and military operatives has been met with some satisfaction among segments of Iranian society. There is a visceral pleasure in seeing the regime’s enforcers made to feel vulnerable, especially when dissidents, journalists, and ordinary citizens are being executed and jailed for far less. But Mohebbi also issued a warning: the Iranian public remains deeply cautious and largely distrustful of such groups. Two major concerns underpin that distrust. The first is the possibility of separatist ambitions. Iran is a multi-ethnic country, and many Iranians fear that any armed uprising in Baluchistan could be a first step toward breaking off a piece of the homeland. The second concern is the influence of radical Islamism, which is fundamentally at odds with the increasingly secular outlook of Iranian society. Many Iranians have fought hard for a modern, open society, and they are wary of replacing one theocracy with another. This is the central dilemma of the JMM: to succeed, it must overcome not only the regime’s security forces but also the deep suspicion of the very people it hopes to inspire. It is not enough to kill a few commanders; the group must prove that it is fighting for a free Iran, not just a separate Baluch state or a Sunni fundamentalist enclave.
There are some encouraging signs that the JMM understands this challenge. Mohebbi noted that the coalition’s recent statements, unlike the rhetoric traditionally associated with similar groups, contain no explicit references to Baluch separatism. Instead, the coalition has identified its primary objective as dismantling the system of Velayat-e Faqih, the guardianship of the Islamic jurist that gives ultimate authority to Iran’s supreme leader, and liberating the entire country from oppression. It has explicitly declared that it seeks “an Iran for all Iranians.” That is a powerful and inclusive message, one that could resonate far beyond the borders of Sistan and Baluchistan. If the JMM can continue to frame its struggle in national terms rather than ethnic terms, it may be able to build a broader coalition of anti-regime forces. But Mohebbi is realistic about the limits of what these groups can achieve. The reality is that they lack the capacity to confront the regime in conventional warfare. They do not have tanks, jets, or the kind of heavy weaponry needed to hold territory against the IRGC. Through guerrilla operations, however, they can inflict significant psychological blows on the regime and its security establishment, eroding morale and making it clear that the government cannot protect its own people. Whether the JMM’s activities can gain traction beyond Sistan and Baluchistan will depend largely on its ability to sustain what appears to be an effort to earn broader public trust. That means avoiding sectarian language, protecting civilians, and making clear that this is not an ethnic conflict but a fight against a brutal, authoritarian regime. It is a high bar, but not impossible. The Iranian people have shown time and again that they are hungry for change, and they will support anyone they believe genuinely represents their aspirations.
From Israel, where the fall of the Islamic Republic is closely watched, Beni Sabti, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies, offered a more sobering assessment. Sabti, who was born in Tehran, told Fox News Digital that the coalition has a lot of guns and has created what he called an armed rebellion against the Iranian regime in the provinces. But he stressed that the upheaval is limited to the region of Baluchistan and has not yet spread to other parts of Iran. He compared the situation to parts of South America where governments have lost sovereignty to militias, meaning that the central authority is effectively unable to rule in certain areas. That is a striking statement: the Islamic Republic, which prides itself on absolute control, cannot currently exercise solid control over its southeastern periphery. Sabti also noted that there are no reporters in the restive region, which makes it difficult to secure accurate news. The regime tightly controls access, and independent journalists are either banned, arrested, or killed. As a result, the outside world gets only fragments of the truth, and much of what we know comes from the same forces that are trying to suppress the uprising. Sabti explained that the IRGC has a headquarters there specifically to fight against these Baluchis, but the JMM has shown it can still operate. The coalition can continue to harm soldiers and, from time to time, kill a commander. There are a lot of these local commanders in Iran, and killing them is not like destroying an air force commander, but it still matters. Every killed commander forces the regime to replace them, to rethink its strategy, and to spend more money and manpower on a problem it would rather ignore. The fight in Sistan and Baluchistan is not going to end quickly, and it may not end at all. It has become a pressure point, a place where Iran’s rulers are bleeding slowly. Whether the JMM can transform that pressure into a broader revolution remains uncertain, but one thing is clear: the southeast is no longer just a footnote in Iran’s troubles. It is a live battlefield, and the regime’s grip there is slipping more with every passing month. The rest of the world, and especially Western capitals, needs to watch closely, because what happens in Sistan and Baluchistan could reshape the future of the Islamic Republic.
